From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Wed May 14 14:45:11 2003 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Wed, 14 May 2003 14:45:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rlpowell by digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.12) id 19G43X-0001XS-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 14 May 2003 14:44:59 -0700 Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 14:44:59 -0700 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Alternative Orthography. Yes, another one. Message-ID: <20030514214459.GI3216@digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: lojban-list@lojban.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 5253 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list So, a lot of people are bothered by the ' in lojban text. That's easy to fix, of course: use "h" if you want. Since "h" isn't used, we can always transform from the one to the other at will. However, the thing about the Lojban orthography that most bothers *me* is capital letters. I mean, seriously. The language adds, what, 23 symbols?, just to represent syllabic stress. It's ridiculous. My proposal is that syllabic stress be marked by a single character before or during the syllable to be stressed. I don't care what character is used, but I'm going to suggest ! as a starting point. Examples, stolen from http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/less1names.html .IBraxim. becomes: .!ibraxim. or .i!braxim. instead of juLIET.binOC. becomes: ju!liet.bin!oc. or juli!et.bino!c. or whatever. MUStafas.keMAL. becomes: !mustafas.ke!mal. (shouldn't that be "MUSTafas" anyways?). Note that despite allowing the character to appear within the syllable (as that is clearly unambiguous), I don't think that's actually a good idea: putting it at the front gives the reader warning. Comments? Whomever wishes to can feel free to make a wiki page out of this. -Robin -- Me: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** I'm a *male* Robin. "but I'm not stupid and people are not stupid who think samely with me" -- from an actual, real, non-spam mail sent to webmaster@lojban.org http://www.lojban.org/ *** .i cimo'o prali .ui